Eau de Hamster Bedding

I recently had a vivid, smell-induced memory and was seduced into to the heart of my childhood by the sweet, earthy smell of small animal bedding.  Here I became suspended in a urea-laden reverie reminiscent of a simpler times when my careless guardianship was good enough.

In one cedar-shaved waft, I am back to having scabby knees, purple, velcro sneakers, and small hands that automatically tinker. Time/Space awareness is mutable as I watch, participate and ponder sometimes grappling with fears that adults don’t seem to understand or maybe remember. My biggest vice is hidden in a cookie jar and my greatest offense to date is skipping Sunday school.  My mental map has one foot in reality, the other in fiction thanks to my very active imagination. I truly believe I will find the people of pineapple place as the children’s book suggested. I am still small enough to be carried if I pretend to sleep so I squeeze my eyes shut and believe it’s convincing.

I was a serial hamster-keeper. One would get lost and soon replaced and maybe be lucky enough to later to be found post-mortem in the far recesses of a closet. With each new rodent I’d pat down a new, woody layer of bedding, decorate spartanly with one chrome hamster wheel, hang a freshwater bottle, fill a small dish with food pellets, and set my responsibility free. Occasionally I’d pick him up, Hamilton was always his name regardless of gender.  Usually he’d wiggle his nose and stare plainly at me, with two unblinking inky irises. Once in a while and seemingly randomly he would bite me with his long yellow teeth and I’d reflexively throw him back into his glass house, indifferent to the velocity of his fall or the impact of his landing. Later, boredom trumping grudge-holding, I’d usher him into his acrylic ball and let him run around the room futilely clawing his way forward until he inevitably collided with the junk in my room and had to change course. Often times he’d pee during this pause, his tiny brain re-buffering.

I got to know many of these creatures and experienced care and love on an infinitesimal level. Eventually I was able to discern the nuance of expression behind those beady eyes. I was able to sense these creatures’ fear, irritation, boredom, loneliness, and very real need for love. I smelled their fur, heating it with the warm air exiting my nostrils before breathing in that sweet scent, now the carrier of rich memories. This ritual was an act, I suppose, of bonding.

In my present life,  I have a three-year old who pretends to be a mouse named ‘Cheese.’ Her care is never an after-thought. I live and breathe to keep her happy and comfortable. She is at the forefront of my mind even in the sub-states of consciousness. When she calls out in the night, my feet are thrown over the bed before the sound of her voice has faded. Having a child places your heart outside your body for the rest of your life. I’ve called this feeling ‘scary-love’ since the day I brought my daughter home, terrified of the greatest potential for loss I had ever encountered. Not hamster-sized. This is BIG.

I do the same thing now with the top of my daughter’s head, inhaling the swirly confluence of her hair, a coordinate that is fleeting; moving upward and more level to myself. There is a similar sweetness to her smell. I breathe her in and become drunk on scary-love and impermanence. This simple act puts me directly in the present moment as I do nothing more than enjoy her.

My hamsters were my training wheels now existing moment to moment with my heart on a tricycle, in a sandbox, swinging dangerously from a tire, my heart who says hello to someone who doesn’t say hello back. I still get randomly bitten from time to time. The difference now is that I can’t throw down and walk away. I must hold. I must love no matter what.

Morphine Lollipop

It was recently brought to my attention that a lollipop-loving acquaintance of mine has a morphine tooth, not a sweet tooth. That’s right, morphine lollipops. Perhaps I am showing my Luddite colors here but, Sweet Jesus, is nothing sacred anymore? Lollipops are for children and soft porn, as Norman Rockwell would have had it, not for “breakthrough pain”. I have a growing collection of once benign, now suspect objects in my mind: It includes thick-soled shoes, Easter eggs, class rings, white vans, and now, lollipops. Soon, my eyes will freeze in a side-long glance, imagining the sub plot of every household object I encounter.

Do we have to be so conspicuous about our addictions? Can’t a lozenge perform the same task as a lollipop without so much pomp and circumstance?

I won’t deny your pain. Who am I to say it’s not valid and that you aren’t exaggerating if not fabricating an ailment to get your mits on the sweetest, designer painkillers on the market? I suspect this is the same conundrum the prescribing doctors face. What is one to do with “intractable, chronic pain” but diagnose, prescribe and treat. It’s a great patient satisfier. It’s also the lesser evil here. When frequent flier number 73 calls, it’s best to have the written prescription at the ready, otherwise you’re in for painfully elaborate fairy tales about prescriptions resting precariously on toilet basin ledges (lost narcs), pain that makes one not want to go on (suicide threat), patients on their way over to sit and wait as long as it takes (they will wait longer than you will).

I am coming to realize that there are a lot more opiates and psychotropics being enjoyed than I once thought. Much of the adult population is on something mind altering. Drugs are ingested, when not being licked, that is, to placate us from feeling things that are uncomfortable. But wasn’t the former expectation of we humans to plod through life stoically, experiencing break through happiness every now again between all the pain and suffering?

Drug use has evolved from a discreet act into a spectator sport. The zenith being the tonguing of our drugs,  loads sexier than swallowing, injecting, inhaling, or dermal adhesion. The behind-closed-doors, household secret becomes a badge of honor, a personality trait, an eccentricity with a cute little lolly as a prop to boot. Welcome, “Morphine Lollipop Barbie.” Drugs are way more fun when you aren’t ashamed about using them.

Like I said before, I won’t deny anyone’s pain. Pain is real. But I also believe in recognizing feelings, allowing them to air out and be noticed, and sitting with them until they pass on through. Medication can help us but we need to help ourselves too. And feelings often need to be felt to be released.

To be certain, chronic physical pain is real and pharmaceutical therapies might be the only answer for those who suffer this way.

But I worry for us a people that we should be licking our wounds when we can,  and not our narcotics.

Experienced Virgins

We have a cultural obsession with wear. Not only do we appreciate authentic distress but we are also seduced by new things rendered to appear used. What is the pathology here?

Shabby is now chic and is no longer a pejorative term. Distress in no longer distressing but comforting and pleasing to the eye.

Things are no longer made to withstand a calendar year let alone a lifetime. So when we see something dressed in the patina of age, we subconsciously interpret the wear as a sign of good stock.

For items of authentic wear, there is an element of comfort in knowing that you are injecting yourself into the history of an object as well as inheriting a subtle history you weren’t a part of previously. And there is the sweet satisfaction of subverting consumer culture by reducing and reusing.

A more stymied psychology lies beneath our love affair with brand new shabby chic. Wares churned out and shipped out to mega retailers like Target and The Gap are distressed at their conception, fake histories painted on in mechanical lockstep. The product beckons us; “Come hither! I am seasoned and wise, yet you will be my first!” As a race, we’ve never been able to resist the oxymoronic; a bearded lady, a flying pig. Why should it be any different with an experienced virgin?

This I found while Googling ‘distressed jeans.’ In its candid, endearing, ESL frankness, it is a bay window overlooking our affection for hand-me-down chic. “One of my Friend, use to wear ripped jeans often. While telling me benefits of that type of jeans, he said, it is prestige to wear them. Because it shows, you are most confident guy or girl in the party and you are get noticed by everyone. I feel my self more adventurous when in ripped jeans.”

Who doesn’t like prestige, feeling adventurous and to you are get noticed by everyone?

Wearing and using the worn out is also an expression of our freedom here in this overly abundant, super power nation. Just like the bevy of options we have to hydrate ourselves with, this is just another choice we are welcomed to exercise. In less spoiled rotten parts of the world, the used look carries no sense of irony. And feeling adventurous is a redundant concept.

But, being a resident of the lower 48, I too enjoy my fair share of Craigslist, Goodwill, Ebay, Freecycle, auctions, and garage sales. In fact, I must confess I have a fetish for the non-new, seeing life as a stage and my role as set-designer. I prefer a squeaky, chipped, Waterfall High Boy to the lime green, Ikea, particle board chest of drawers, hands down.

If new things are no longer intended to last, then our supply of authentic distress is finite. Who will receive our subtle histories if there is no object remaining to carry them? This is the anxiety-provoking bit and is perhaps why we are clinging more fiercely to these relics than ever before. We are connoisseurs of past personal histories but who will know us? Surely our progeny with remember us but, sadly, people aren’t the best vehicles for history.  It has been said that every time a person recalls a memory,  the act inaccurately alters that memory. Objects don’t remember that time you spilled coffee on them. They just continue on, adorned by a telling brown ring.

Where does this leave me? I can’t prevent crap from being made.

What I can do is continue to foster talismans of history. I can commit to quality and resist soulless produce. I can embrace contradiction; it may be old but it’s new to me.

Idling High

Ah, anxiety. From where does it originate? I have been on the ever unfolding journey of meditation for some time now and my latest obsession has been with looking away from the mind and toward the heart. Last night in my yoga class I posed the question to all the seated yogis as they literally moved their closed eyes away from their brains and down toward their hearts, “how would it be to become a slave to the heart rather than the mind?” What would it look like, feel like, be like to turn away from the tapes that are constantly running in our brains, the commentary, the chatter, the lists, the reactions, the obsessions, the neurons of emotion that fire all day long and splatter up onto the walls of our craniums like cave paintings of advanced emoticons- how would it be to turn all that noise down and consult with the heart primarily?”

I have been feeling like I’ve been “idling high” as of late; envisioning worst care scenarios and feeling in general like the sky is falling. I fear of losing my loved ones. I fear that I am terminally ill. I fear that my fears will manifest. I have underlying, omnipresent nausea throughout the day and no, I’m not pregnant. I checked three times. What on earth is going on with me?

In many eastern cultures, a lowered gaze is considered polite and possibly reverential. On the contrary, an upward glance indicates that the mind is our sole container of wisdom or it can even indicate distaste such as in the rolling of the eyes. And notice how when you close your eyes, the mind relaxes as the eyes look away from the mind toward the heart. Then roll them up toward the mind again, eyes still closed and you probably start feeling tense again.

When I sit and practice meditation, I am able to come away with a healthy dose of equanimity. That is to say, I can hold my own emotions- things like fear, anger, and pain with a level mind. Just like breathing in a challenging yoga posture, I allow whatever comes up to have a seat in my mind however uncomfortable that initially might be. Then I breath, relax, feel watch, and allow. Allowing the difficulties to recede back into the darkness doesn’t assist them in moving on or through. Shining light on them, seeing them for who they are, breathing with them, allows them to slowly begin to dissolve.

So what happens to my golden equanimity between sits? Why do I become a buzzing bee of high frequency? Why can’t I hold all my nervous energy up to that healing light? My hunch is that I’m backlogged.

I’m a big proponent of keeping good emotional hygiene. Just like a kitchen, the mind needs to have the dishes done, the counters wiped down, the floor swept, and the trash taken out so that we can begin anew without the garbage and mess of yesterday getting us off on the wrong foot. However, if there is a high volume running through your kitchen, and only one disher, things aren’t always going to be nice and tidy for the next day. Sometimes the best we can do is let the dishes soak overnight.

I think I have been starting my days lately with a messy emotional kitchen. And things are coming into the mind and not getting processed or looked at and all I’m left with are those grotesque emoticons on the walls of my mind.

Why do we think we are so great that things require us to think about them? What happens when we look away from the brain and simply pay no mind to it. Nothing seems to fall apart. Life goes on. What happens when we view what comes through our minds with equal response; naming the thought, saying hello and then returning our inward gaze to the heart? The sun still sets. The moon still rises.

If I could hear my own vibration right now, I imagine it would sound like one of those dog whistles that humans can barely hear because it’s out of our aural range. After meditation, I feel the energy coming off of me resonating deeply like a mystical didgeridoo.

Thus, my quandary is this; do I remain in the unsustainable position of the overworked mind-slave, maintaining Godly emotional hygiene, or do I look away from all things cerebral, gazing into the heart, letting things fall where they may, keeping my eyes lowered, accepting all things with the same peaceful knowing? Something tells me I am going to miss out on a lot of meaningful eye contact that way, let alone all the juicy bits of narrative that make life interesting. I’m no ascetic. I am highly spiritual but I am not willing to retreat into a cave for months on end with my bowl of brown rice. I like contemplation but I also like participation. How do I prevent having to process all the emotional stamps of my day through the brain without adding even more to the to-do list? Is there a menu option to defer certain stimuli directly to the heart? How did Mother Theresa- the ultimate spiritual participator- do it, encountering all that suffering day after day, year after year, her inky brown eyes joyful until the very end? She operated from the heart and kept her eyes on the road ahead.

Perhaps it’s the application of faith on top of a riddle:  Faith that everything is going to be alright, even if it isn’t.

Crown Chakra-itis

It has been raining incessantly. The sky reminds me of the time I had a layover in Detroit and was aesthetically violated. It’s cold and wet outside. The unfortunate worms on the sidewalk are too chilly to even wriggle back over to the earth. Everyone is sick or paranoid of getting sick. H1N1 has become a four letter word. We are in the midst of a pandemic and to literally top it off, the weather has to suck. I thought not having a sun-roof in my car was bad but with this gray thick nasty overhead, my crown chakra is all plugged up. 

As a yoga instructor, I tell my students to send a line of energy out through their crowns for support in posture holds. As with dense gray skies and  sunroofless cars, this direction is hindered. It’s as if someone is placing their thumb over your blowhole.

I am the weather. It really is that simple. Power(s) that be, please return to us weathervein earthlings your golden orb before I blow.

California Death Beauty

Erich, Daphne and I just returned from a week long trip to California. On the flight out, the Bay Area winds were so fierce, we nearly missed the tarmac and landed on only the left wheel of the plane. The whole flight clapped once we leveled out and the flight attendant confessed this was the worst flight she’d ever been on. Our landing was a harbinger welcoming us to one giant land mass of irony.

After dickering at the Avis counter for ten years in baby time, we swerved over the Golden Gate bridge- algorithms of scaffolding threatening “syntax error” above us, the wind rocking us and singing us the lullaby only Rosemary’s baby could fall asleep to. Driving up to a wedding the next day, flooring our “upgraded” Hyundai Elantra up a nigh wall, I wondered exactly how we were still sticking to the earth. Such logistics should be contemplated only after one has survived them, never during the moment of physics in question.

The next day,we headed south on highway 1 along the coast from the San Francisco Bay area toward southern California where my maternal grandparents live. The passage was winding and the ocean so close I was able to sex the sunning sea lions from my passenger window. Then there was the whole deal with falling rocks. Nets were strung sideways to slow the boulders. However, they were in laughable proportion to the mass of their target. A slight tectonic hiccup and we become sun-kissed roadkill. The nets were more of an aesthetic comfort-an afterthought to increase tourism on the One, perhaps.  Of course, there is also the issue of wildfire in these parts; the scorched earth like perfect tinder waiting patiently to be ignited by a tiny flint- a firefly might do. All around, the flora, though beautiful and exotic, dons needles that taunt, “you can look, but don’t touch.”

All the way down this mirage of a state, I get the same sense I get when drinking large amounts of whiskey; you must enjoy now, for tomorrow may never come. An entire state that forces its inhabitants to become ascetics in their impermanence. It’s no wonder there are so many hippies. These people are not hippies by choice. The hippies are simply abiding an environment that asks them to enjoy, live in the moment, ride the wave, taste of the herbs, for tomorrow may never come.

There are many variables to be considered when on vacation that could attribute to changes in one’s personal modus operandi. Maybe it was the proximity of my imminent demise or maybe it was just plain old change of scenery; either way, I had such clarity of mind, such acute awareness to not only my surroundings and goings-ons but also my mental patterning and fluctuations. I felt truly Zen-like for those seven days. I have a journal to prove it.

Our trip home was another family friendly game of Russian Roulette. Three flights and a one night stand with the Westin in Dallas later, we arrived on terra firma, safely sedated once again in good old landlocked Madison, Wisconsin. My journal has sat plainly on the shelf since I unpacked. I can hardly wait for tornado season to come around…

I’ll Get You, My Pretty

Lately there hasn’t been much to say. I have been grubbing for something to write about and coming up empty. If a writer has to write, then I am constipated. This leads me to wonder if I am not living enough and am therefore, out of material. Maybe I’m just too deeply entrenched beneath life’s minutia to notice the irony, feel the sub-story, ferret out the material. Whatever it is, it’s driving me bananas. These bananas aren’t of the rational bunch; I don’t get paid to blog. I have only a modest reader base. Nobody gets hurt if I haven’t blogged in a month. Except me. I go mentally septic.

I find life much richer when regularly written about. For a writer, writing is the excrement of daily living. Without it, one feels backed up, irritable, preoccupied. So where is my Metamucil?

There’s an old adage that goes something like this and may at least partially explain my predicament: “Inspiration exists but it needs to find you working.” My problem is, I want the muse to not only inspire me at my desk with her feathered tickler and glitter lashes, I want her to mow me over, hand me the laptop and then feed me shelled pistachios.

I don’t have all day to work the literary salt mine hacking away at the English language with a pick axe and bucket at the ready to catch tiny granules of insight. I spend the good hours of my days in the plebeian field donned in Sean John alphabet camo’s, waiting for the illusive narrative vixen to come over and talk to me. So far she hasn’t. The wireless headset might be a little off-putting.

I must admit, I have been feeling more like a student than a career writer. A better writer is to blame. She makes me feel like I am late for my ESL class at the community center. I read her blog and turn shades of it’s not easy being green. She’s got it all; content, style, word wielding, wit. Reading her locutions, my typing fingers shrivel up and curl away from home row. I have been eclipsed by a force more powerful than pounds. I am Dorothy’s remaining ruby slippers peaking out from beneath heavy talent, my toes reaching out towards the nirvana of eloquence.

Typically, perfect prose is an inspiration that compels me to create something moving and useful. It is a new experience for me to be rendered disabled by a master wordsmith. I haven’t sat long enough for inspiration to find me working and suddenly alight on my dominant right hand. Far from my mahogany (cough, pine) desk, I’ve been bitching and belly aching that the muse won’t notice me. And then I go out and get drunk on a scalding serum of blog-envy. Yes, I’m a glutton for punishment.

So here I am, being forced into the exercise every writer knows they must attempt to make exodus from the dread writer’s block: writing about writing. That makes me want to barf and sleep at the same time. Hopefully I don’t aspirate.

My pretty muse, I will get you. I must put down my glass of lust and settle into the writers saddle, every day, with or without time, I will write. You don’t watch Buns Of Steel from your armchair. At least I really hope you don’t. The connoisseur must know what goes into the making of the that which they know. They must have recently had the sweat of blind, trusting creation drip from their brow to fully appreciate, absorb and digest the object of their affection.

Blogger, you know who you are. Keep writing. If you don’t, I will have no heavy house fall upon me to awaken me from my own deep sleep.

Survival of the Chattiest

The oral tradition, known on the streets as chit chat, is alive and well today. For those who bypassed fourth grade, the oral tradition is defined by the verbal sharing of colorful life testimonies. With this casual communion comes the invaluable; the bond of trust that is forged when allowing yourself to be known by another. It is my not-so-humble opinion that, in this life, those who converse, come in first.

Facebook is an example of the oral tradition being taken to new heights. Not only can one broadcast anecdotally to scads of friends, we can do so with keen attention to composition and style. Facebook is a great practice venue for those who are conditioning in the art of chat. Have you ever before seen such ample opportunity to publicly turn a phrase, share an anecdote, bestow the minutia of your life? Seriously, I could write a book about Facebook. And I might.

Texting; more evidence of not only of our insatiable drive to communicate, but our burgeoning artfulness at doing so. Daily, thousands of thumbs spell out millions of mini-masterpieces. The mundane becomes rich fodder upon which to contemplate, share, let someone in. I myself just upgraded my family plan to include unlimited texting. At 10 cents a text, I was racking up $50 in monthly texts. Now I’m putting the FREE back in freedom of speech, err, for $30 a month.

Chatting is a radical act which is part of the reason it’s so much fun. “Chat Theory,” as it were, challenges the agenda of mainstream culture by eroding our dependency on the system. Chatting is the mother of bartering, Craigslist, word-of-mouth referrals, barn-raises, inventions, business plans, movements, and revolutions.

When we talk to each other we exchange ideas. We form alliances, or if we don’t, we form an opinion that can later be used in chat with someone else, wink wink. We set our bone collection down on the table together and understand a narrative that could only exist in each others company. Then we pack up our bones again, our load of more import than when we first arrived.

The desire to communicate is evidence of sound mental health. In a woebegone state, I have been known to quarantine myself and withhold personal information. If you asked me what color socks I was wearing, I would tell you green to distract you from the ugly truth of my blaze orange. Conversely, when I am notably content and have struck the delicate balance of life, I freely offer up details of seemingly irrelevant information that have the tendency to take on a gem-like quality in the right company. Morsels of insight into my person are good in the giving and the getting. I turn inside out as a sacrament.

As a creative writing major in undergrad, I was told that everything reveals character. Because of this truth, nothing is unimportant when it comes to the details of people and their lives. You could tell me that the mail carrier has bird beak finger nails and this physical detail informs me on a deeper level about the woman who knows me by address. Suddenly a connection is made. And I am hungry for more.

I have a friend who has a sign in her kitchen that reads, “Let’s drink coffee and gossip!” She has zero shame in talking about the lives of others. After all, she says, “it’s not gossip, it’s just the facts.” Gossip is the red headed step-brother of the facts.

Living in a small town and working in the micro-community of a women’s health clinic, I have come to realize the advantage those have who are in the know. Fresh, juicy information is currency of the realm; sharing news and information is a gift, receiving it is a gift. Being first at receiving new pieces of the narrative places you higher up on the totem pole. One comes to learn that being last in line at the game of telephone both reveals and secures your lowly chat-status in the community.

Several years ago I had the epiphany about people communicating and the power of making connections. I made a goal to decorate my life not with things but with people. I vowed to fill a Rolodex with a menagerie of humans.  Now I suppose I need to revise my dream-2k. I will fill a flash drive with friends. I don’t plan on hustling like a saccharine, pharmaceutical rep and gathering contact info from people I have hoodwinked into being my best acquaintance. Instead, I will weave a gossamer web of the true selves I have witnessed.

If you haven’t yet seen Harold and Maude, see it. Teen-aged Harold who hates people and loves death becomes involved with the ever positive octogenarian, Maude who says, “I love people. They’re my species.” We are all just people- unless you are some other species that is able to read, in which case, cool.

I recently enjoyed discussing aerial photography with a very pleasant and thoughtful autistic man at the Mount Horeb Summer Art Fair. The particular photograph we were both enjoying was abstract upon first glance and then grew vaguely familiar.  Upon closer inspection, we decided we were looking at clouds. Actually I wondered and then he pointed and said, “clouds.” Clouds or not, I packed up my bones with a smile.

The Insurance of Soulless Produce

My apologies to any remaining readers out there who may have visited ‘Pony’ only to find a thick layer of dust enshrining the previous post. I have not keyed anything in months because I am attempting to start my own business and liberate myself from the so called Matrix I clock in and out of five days a week. Hence, the subject matter of this post; work.

The enslavement of a benefits package is the detriment of our country. I often wonder exactly how many people are in their respective vocations solely for insurance. I, for one, am- devoting the prime hours of my day to a primary care clinic. I have zero interest in the institution of health care. From my observations, most of the people in health care don’t really either. A lot of them went into our western health care system wanting to help people and, in turn, forgot about themselves. Lots of smoke breaks, Diet Mountain Dew, outdated hair and bodies stranger to the light of day. Lots of gripes, paper pushing, and assembly-line care taking place. Lots of sick people being corralled through the system from one specialist to the next. Lots of “that’s not in my jurisdiction, please step down to window C” sort of stuff going on. Not a healthy environment, IMHO.

Day in and day out we while away the hours sometimes serving no more purpose than that of a warm body. The result of our labors, in most cases, 40 hours a week, a product created without passion, without intention, without good faith. No wonder stuff isn’t made like it used to be. Crap begets more crap.

My parents bought a handmade rug a few years back from a Native American woman they knew out west. It took more than a year for her to complete it. Before the purchase, she explained her reason for the lengthy turnaround time and described how she would only enter the hogan where she kept her loom if she felt pure and had only good energy to weave into her creation. As soon as anything negative entered her spirit, she would cease working and swiftly exit her space. The rug hangs on their wall and feels good to be around. My parents compensated her for her impeccable effort rather than the material value of the small throw rug.

If you drive down any given street on any given trash day, you see how we value our goods; easy come, easy go. Cheap, broken, plastic crap exiting our lives as uneventfully as they entered- a guilty impulse buy, a quick spring-cleaning purge. McDonald’s in, McDonald’s out. Wal-Mart in, Wal-Mart out; each time greasing our entrails to expedite the next. It is sad that I don’t even know where to shop for something that is built to last. This leaves me to wonder: Is quality an outmoded commodity?

What happened to our cobblers, our artisans, our needlepointers, our blacksmiths? Well, why would you need them when you can just go to Target and buy new knives, new shoes, mass produced “art” and “linens?” Aisle after aisle of shiny new products await in most places within a fifteen mile radius.

The sacrilege is that what is being produced is being done so without love. And the people manufacturing these soulless goods are doing so without passion. Thus, we end up with lots of crap that has been churned out without intention. If you are still reading this think about Einstein’s theory that energy cannot be eliminated and thus, must go somewhere. Herein lies the question: If the energy one uses to labor day in and out isn’t being infused into that which they labor, then where IS it going? It has to go somewhere. There must be a lot of orphaned energy floating out there in the ether. If we could only harness it and apply it to the work we should be doing. 

We spend our days doing work we couldn’t care less about so that we can buy the things we need. However, the things we need are being carelessly manufactured whether it be food, shelter, clothing or otherwise. Nobody wins. Not the producer and not the consumer. If we were to stem the tide with work we love, the worker and customer benefit. Is there any question as to what needs to happen, readers? No. But like the obese social worker touting the importance of self-care to healthcare employees at today’s employee growth and development lunch meeting, what we know and what we do aren’t always in sync. We may be well aware of the facts but continue on with destructive behavior.

Let’s have a sea change, shall we? Let’s embrace our freedom and resolve to waste no more time acting perfunctorily to meet others dreams- many of which are ill-conceived to begin with.

But here we encounter The Great American Trap: The soul stirs and the fires of inspiration are stoked only to be smothered by the wet blanket of insurance. That is why I am typing this from my shared workstation in a Swine-Flu infested clinic and not from my yoga studio/ spa/ dance club. I can’t afford to get sick at my dream job. I probably wouldn’t get sick considering my line of work but that fear keeps us at the cube-farm. If Universal Health Care For All of Obama can get us out from under this rock- this albatross, this national boulder, then we are going to see more people embracing their bliss and spending their days doing work they enjoy. 

What are you so passionate about? To what purpose should you place all that rich, creative energy? What are you currently doing with your days? Are you using that energy? Are you passionate? I truly welcome your thoughts, dreams, visions, and feedback. I would like nothing more than to hear from you on this subject.

Who Wants a Postcard from Hell?

Suddenly everything has changed. I am thirty and watching my cholesterol. I have to wear a holter monitor for two days to check the ticker. I have one friend who was told to quit drinking if he wants to keep his one remaining kidney. I have another friend was told she has to wean off psychotropic meds if she wants to conceive. My best friend’s husband just had a pituitary gland tumor removed. I draw off of a plastic cigarette that contains a cartridge of pharmaceutical nicotine to kick my one cigarette a day habit. Things have changed. We aren’t as glamorous but we are here.

I have a couple friends who are twenty. That’s right, the number that comes after nineteen. If you’re reading this, odds are, you were probably twenty once. I see myself through their eyes sometimes when we hang out. Depending on my state of mind, sometimes this perspective is a glorified vision of something they would aspire to in a decade and, other times, I imagine they are viewing my haggard, love-handled surrender into mediocrity with an equal parts cocktail of fear and disgust. Our relationship is a mutual one; I offer sage advice and in return, get my lexicon updated with fresh terms like “ham wallet.” I laugh, then chide then laugh again, fishing for more appalling terms.

We glorify youth in our society and therefore, set ourselves up for disappointment once we begin our descent over the hill on our seventeenth birthday. I want to live where they glorify wrinkles- especially laugh lines and the expression lines around the eyes- crows feet are for the birds- I call them signs of life. What really gets me is the attempt to appear twenty when, clearly, you are not. You’re fooling no one, you look ridiculous and you’re offending those of us who don’t see how injecting botulism into our faces or carving the excess from our inner thighs to plump up our Maiden Forms is any more desirable than signs of age. Take the image above for example. Would you rather do that or, say, the 40 something you shared the elevator with today? I’ll take the one who asked me which floor I needed.

There’s a lot that could be addressed under the age umbrella, ahem, Miley Cyrus- cough- future coupon cutter- that would just be petty let alone obvious to go into. However, I do feel the need to proactively affirm all who are aging and to promote the natural course of doing so.

If I have to be blinded by another whitestripped smile or a set of eyes that are in such sharp contrast to the overbaked hide that surrounds them, I think I may lose my tabouli. What are we so ashamed of? In this day and age of cancer and heart disease and car accidents, shouldn’t we be wearing our age like a badge of honor? Like, dude, I effin’ made it this far, I must be doing something right. Aging is a daily affirmation of our very existence. Yes, we might be droopy in places, sore in places, hard of hearing, or have delicate psyches, but we are here, GD!

I have a saying I like to use in customer service after particularly profound interactions of ill-communication; out of earshot, I like to sigh, “Damn, I miss Darwin.” Nerdy, I know. But it truly baffles the mind how some have made it this far in life. I must here highlight the sad truth that our culture does nurture many who clearly aren’t fit for longevity let alone survival. Maybe this is the reason for the youth-worship phenomenon. We can’t take pride in our own aging when the middle-aged knuklehead next to us is old and dumb. Shit. Who’s gonna see me in hell later?

So maybe the solution is to embrace your laugh lines and leave the dummies in the dust. Just thinking out loud here. But then there’s the whole compassion issue and that just doesn’t feel compassionate. So how do we age gracefully if we can’t take pride in the success of our years? Hmmmm…. I’m stymied.

What if, bear with me here, we obeyed the words of the great Joan Osbourne and understood that the chochy prick-wad who took your seat on the bus (what happened to chivalry!) was God? With a great stretch of the imagination, the thug in the backseat with his ass crack in full contact with the bus seat is God. They say, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. What if all these douches were our teachers in some way? What if we could see through all the offensive mannerisms and misguided principles and find the beauty of each irritating being? This, my friend, is radical compassion and as far as I know, it is a serum for all that is bad.

I am no Ghandi, no Mother Theresa. In fact, I just pissed someone off on the phone because she misinterpreted a plain question as an insult; “do you know the patient’s name?” “YES, I know her name. MA’M, I”M DRIVING!” Mmmmhmmm, I thought. It is hard to drive and read. I didn’t take the bate even though she really made me want to pull her hair through the phone. Instead, I listened. I felt wise. I made sure she didn’t allow my heart rate to increase or my breath to shorten. I practiced my radical compassion, using all my strength to find God on the phone. And I did.

And you know what? It made me feel pretty damn beautiful.